“No; don’t call my mother-in-law yet,” Diane pleaded, as Miss Lucilla was about to touch a bell.  “I want to talk to you first, and tell you things I couldn’t say in writing.”

Then the story was told again, and from still another point of view.  Once more Diane acknowledged the weaknesses of conduct she had confessed already, but Miss Lucilla was a woman and understood her speech.

“I knew you’d believe in me,” Diane said, half sobbing, as she ended her tale.  “I knew you’d understand that one can be a foolish woman without having been a wicked one.  Mr. Pruyn would not have been so hard on me if he had thought of that.”

“Shall I go and tell him?”

“No; it’s too late.  The wrong that’s been done needs a more radical remedy than you or I could bring to it.  Bienville has lied, and I must force him to retract.  Nothing else can help me.”

To poor Miss Lucilla this was a new and alarming feature in the situation.  If it was so, then Marion Grimston ought not to be allowed to marry him.  If Diane was right—­and she must be right—­Mrs. Bayford was mistakenly urging on a match that would bring unhappiness to her niece.  This complication was almost more than Miss Lucilla’s quietly working intellect could seize, and she followed Diane’s succeeding words with but a wandering attention.  She understood, however, that, next to being justified by Bienville, Diane attached importance to the aid she expected from Mrs. Eveleth.  Hers was the only living voice that could testify to the happy relations always existing between her son and his wife.  She could tell, and would tell, that George had fallen as the champion of Diane’s honor, and not as the victim of her baseness.  If he died it was because he believed in her, not because he was seeking the readiest refuge from their common life.  Diane would explain all to Mrs. Eveleth, to whose loyalty she could trust, and on whose love she could depend.

“I’ll go and find her,” Miss Lucilla said, rising.  “You’d like to see her alone?”

“No; I’d rather you were present.  My troubles have got beyond the stage of privacy.  It’s best that those who care for me should hear what can be said in my defence.”

Miss Lucilla went, and returned.  A few minutes later Mrs. Eveleth could be heard coming slowly down the stairs.  But before she had time to enter the room Derek Pruyn, using the privilege of a relative, walked in without announcement.

XIII

If the morning had brought surprises to Miss Lucilla van Tromp, it had not denied them to the Marquis de Bienville.  They were all the more astonishing in that they came out of a sky that was relatively clear.  As he stood in his dressing-gown, with a cigarette between his fingers, at one of the upper windows of his tall, towerlike hotel, he would have said that his life at the moment resembled the blue dome above him, from which, after a cloudy dawn and dull early morning, the last fleecy drifts were being blown away.